Just how politically damaging were COVID school closures? Randi Weingarten has spent the last several weeks attempting to rehabilitate herself and the American Federation of Teachers—somehow now as advocates of keeping schools open all along during the pandemic. Weingarten made that argument to Congress last month, in the media, and to anyone who would listen.

Lori Lightfoot knows better. The first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose re-election rejected the union chief’s revisionist history and laid blame on Weingarten for the political woes of mayors across America. “We put $100 million into retrofitting classrooms,” Lightfoot told CNN, “but the union needed to work with us, and they never did that.”

Weingarten’s revisionism, along with Anthony Fauci’s disclaimer of any responsibility for shutdowns, offers tacit admissions that their panicked COVID policies failed. They know school closures and business shutdowns didn’t do anything to mitigate the pandemic and did a lot of damage to children and families. Instead of trying to gaslight America, Weingarten and the shutdown brigade should be offering apologies instead.